Re:Is It Better to Be Poor in Bangladesh or the Mississippi ...
by redsummer on Thursday March 09, 2017 @11:54AM
(#13830540)
Benjamin Franklin on the appeal of the traditional Native American life: "When an Indian Child has been brought up among us, taught our language and habituated to our Customs, yet if he goes to see his relations and make one Indian Ramble with them, there is no perswading him ever to return, and that this is not natural [to them] merely as Indians, but as men, is plain from this, that when white persons of either sex have been taken prisoners young by the Indians, and lived a while among them, tho' ransomed by their Friends, and treated with all imaginable tenderness to prevail with them to stay among the English, yet in a Short time they become disgusted with our manner of life, and the care and pains that are necessary to support it, and take the first good Opportunity of escaping again into the Woods, from whence there is no reclaiming them"
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Re:Is It Better to Be Poor in Bangladesh or the Mississippi ...
by kbenson on Thursday March 09, 2017 @12:51PM
(#13831150)
Happiness is more closely linked to status (relative position and wealth) than absolute benefits[1][2]. In that respect, I imagine someone taken from the environment they understand and are accustomed to and put into a foreign one where they are likely a curiosity, and at best an outsider, would result in them longing for what they understood.
For the same reason, I imagine the poor in Benjamin Franklin's time might find a Native American lifestyle (if accepted by the group) to have some draw if exposed to it. I would by the same measure expect the middle and upper classes to find it less appealing.
1: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/science-news/3315638...
2: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?um=1&ie=UTF-8&lr&cites=37...